Is it really going to happen? Will we see one of the more momentous announcements in the tech world next week? The web's been abuzz about Nokia possibly adopting Windows Phone 7 for a number of handsets, and now even The New York Times has chimed in - at which point it might be time to start taking the rumours seriously.

The market has shifted and they have to adapt. Sure there'll be people who don't want the 'smart' phone but I'm betting that'll be a shrinking market.

What would cause someone who hasn't already gotten a smartphone to get one in the near future? If it was about money, they'd have managed by now. They either don't want/need one, or their money problem is more serious than that. In either case, they won't purchase one.

Again with the generalization... Each company has its own strategy. You cannot lump them together.

* Apple sells turnkey expensive solutions tied in with their other services and products.
* Google is trying to make sure nobody ever locks-in their cash-cow (the Web) by delivering competitive products for free.
* Nokia is enjoying a stable feature-phone market and has decided it's time to dip a toe into the smartphone market.

If MeeGo is successful it will steal from Android/iOS/WP7 marketshare, not from featurephones. If not... the featurephone market is not going anywhere.

(And from the way you talk about this I don't think you have the 1st idea how big the featurephones are on 2/3rds of the planet and just how many people don't have any use for smartphones. Don't judge the entire world by your small corner of it.)

Anyway... some companies are secure and stable enough that they don't feel the need to jump on the latest bandwagon until they feel ready. That's Nokia and smartphones. That's HTC and tablets. They held back until they felt confident going in. That's smart.